


Triptych of an Evening

by LadyFeste



Series: The Hungry City [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a metahuman au, Gen, That's for sure anyway, eldritch being Gotham au, joker we'll come back to you too, metahuman status not appearing in this picture, uhhhh well it's an AU, we will be playing in this universe later, wouldn't do to pacrim it and show the monster in thirty seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:32:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19060870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFeste/pseuds/LadyFeste
Summary: One night, three scenes. The Batman scurries off to his hidey hole, the Joker limps back into hiding, and the city that made them both observes unnoticed.





	Triptych of an Evening

**Author's Note:**

> AU as was teased on tumblr--Bruce is a meta, the city is alive and wants to eat you. Hopefully will be bringing more stories to the series soon. My cowriter and GF is currently tackling a different au project (feat. Jason Todd being a theater nerd) so not sure when the next thing will be up. Enjoy!

I

Bruce woke up in an alley, dark and cold and violent, with a sense of deja vu so powerful he almost closed his eyes again, sure he was dreaming. There was the familiar nauseating sensation at the front of his head, behind his eyes; there was the indifferent pressure on his chest rapidly lifting; there was the faint buzzing sensation throughout his body, as if his blood was running faster than it should. He sat up, carefully, always carefully after falling down on the job, you never knew who could still be around. When there were no sounds of gunfire or gasps of fear or footsteps rapidly hurtling any direction, he put one hand on the wall beside him and stood. The pressure was already gone. The nausea faded as he rose to his feet--steady, of course, because that was what the Batman had to be. Even on the nights that weren’t good nights, and tonight was shaping up to be horrible. 

Lord, he was tired. 

He leaned against the wall briefly and considered calling Alfred for a pickup. It would lead to stony silence and a lecture. Probably several lectures, and an awkward argument. He did not call Alfred. He pushed away from the wall and fired the grapple gun at the nearest roof overhead. The buzzing would fade soon, just as the rest of it had. The weariness wouldn’t, he knew from experience, until he slept, and perhaps not for a few days then. He wasn’t sure if it was regular patrol-tired or not. It was the one thing he couldn’t get the hang of. Grappling up another story and jumping off the wall of that building, Bruce glided down toward a flatter roof, in the general direction of where he’d left the Batmobile. 

He only made it two streets away before he had to stop and throw up. Waking up in alleys did that sometimes. If only he wasn’t so tired.

The buzzing had gone by the time he made it to the Batmobile and told it to take him home. He leaned back against the headrest and sighed. It was early still, only a little after two, and Alfred would want to know why he was coming back early. He couldn’t say what it really was. Not that it would matter. Alfred would know how the night had gone no matter what he said, it seemed, but there would be fewer lectures if he said nothing. The lectures wouldn’t change anything, and he would rather be spared them. All he wanted to do was go to bed. Tomorrow would sort itself out when the sun rose again, and there would be another night. A better night, that didn’t end early in a stalemate with the Joker and several casualties on his conscience. 

He wasn’t sure how he managed to feel both so old and so new at this at the same time. It had been nearly a year since he’d donned the cape and cowl and although he’d never felt so complete in his life, he’d also never felt so tired. He was only twenty-two; he shouldn’t have bones that ached. He was going to wear out his muscles before he turned thirty if he wasn’t careful. He’d have barometer-joints within the next few years. 

Bruce’s face twisted under the mask in what may have been a smile, but was more of a grimace. It seems in Alfred’s absence, he’d opted to lecture himself. He doubted it would pass as an excuse if he didn’t manage to find a way to sneak undetected to his incredibly comfortable bed in the manor, but perhaps it might soften the blow. And there was always tomorrow night. A better night.

 

II

He thought he’d really gotten the Bat this time. He scowled as he watched the costumed crusader furled out his cape like a parachute at the last second before the bomb exploded, using the gust of hot air to control the way the blast flung him. The Joker cursed. He survived that. Sure, he was technically in the blast radius, but he definitely survived. His body armor was made of tougher stuff than the Joker could figure. He’d seen the Bat walk away from blasts within that radius before.

Neither of them had really won this round. The Joker had a bad head wound and what felt like a broken ankle. The bomb had been his getaway for the evening, and it had worked. He wouldn’t be pursued. But the plan to replace all the cash in First Gotham Bank with monopoly bills had been foiled, and all the banks would be increasing security measures as a result. He wouldn’t get the media attention he wanted this time. 

The Joker snuck through the back alleys of Gotham with all the confidence of one who had been born into them, despite the ringing in his head and the blood dripping into his eyes. He wiped at his face and thought about what target would be most satisfying to take his frustrations out on--some of his men, perhaps? Harley? Whatever random citizen he could nab off the streets on the way? The explosion he’d almost killed the Bat in would have scared most everyone away from this part of the city, so the last one was probably out. His men would be regrouping right about this time, heading to the usual safe houses and hidey holes. He wiped his face on his sleeve again, pausing to lean against a building to rest the ankle for a minute. He wondered what sort of hidey hole the Batman had made for himself and where that might be. 

He would have to find a new way to pay his goon squad soon. Sure, fear worked well as an incentive to stay in line and do as you’re told, but only as long as you were getting paid for your time. The carrot and the stick at once. Without a payout, the group the Joker had assembled wouldn’t last more than a few more weeks on intimidation alone. That hurt, yes, but what seemed to sting more was the fact that his face wouldn’t be plastered on every news station in Gotham within just a few hours. He wanted people talking about him--he wanted to keep people talking about him. He needed their attention to maintain the fear of the population at large. The common citizen wasn’t afraid of old news, of has-been bad guys. If he wanted to be influential, he had to be memorable. There wasn’t anything more memorable than a crazy clown. No one would admit it out loud, but he had a feeling that the city liked having him around, enjoyed having someone so memorable, so colorful, so despicable. If nothing else it was sensational, and sensationalism always sells papers like nothing else does. 

(The Bat saw through it, saw through all of it, saw him, and he hated him for it.)

There would be another day, he thought to himself as he slipped into the sewer through a grate in the broken cobblestone street. He lived to see another day outside of Arkham’s walls, and that meant time, time to plan again, time to build his control of the city, time for the Bat to come to his senses and take him seriously. Where there was life there was hope,and in Gotham there was always life. 

 

III

And beneath the alleys the Batmobile cut through at top speeds, beneath the sewers the Joker crept into like the rat he always would be, beneath the concrete foundations and the regolith, mangled into a thick sheet of bedrock, the bones rotted. The earth shifted to accommodate the swelling and receding of the organic and the stone, merging into one, marrow petrifying even as it decayed. The bones rotted, hair grown thin over the millenia matted and shrank and shriveled into dirt. The meat of the thing was long gone, decomposed into the soil that grew the city’s food and held the city’s roots. The ground shifted again, minute earthquakes that never breached the surface sending imperceptible shockwaves through the bedrock. 

The city had been founded in the mid 1600s. The whole venture was an accident. No one had intended on fully settling this particular plot of land where crops seemed not to grow as well as the surrounding area and fog rolled in faster and stayed longer than it was supposed to. It hadn’t felt right, even to the first handful of families who plopped themselves down and broke ground on sod buildings. But the more dangerous wild animals were less frequent there and the native populations gave the area a wide berth. It never felt like a safe place, but it was rarely attacked, and that attracted newcomers. Newcomers that replaced the sod with more permanent wood and stone as it fell apart, and in a blink it seemed three generations had gone by--each one noticing that leaving the growing town was getting harder. It was called by many names, but Gotham was the last. One of the oldest european-founded cities in America that was still a major metropolitan center. It was considered unique, even in the early days, but no one understood just how true that was. 

There were no other cities like Gotham, not in all the world. No other cities as derelict, as crumbling, as dark as Gotham, no other cities with auras like smoglines concealing both truth and fiction, no other cities as possessive and needy and old as Gotham. Hidden beneath miles of geological history bone hardened and crumbled, corpse wax calcified, and the city itself blinked into awareness once again. No other city could do that either. 

Gotham, starving and drowsy, rose briefly to examine the deeds of the night before falling back once more, settling into the streets, into the soil, into the bones. They weren’t Gotham’s, not really, but they were as comfortable a bed as any. So neither the clown nor the cape had failed nor won. So there was no reason to watch further. Not now, that it had been fed for the time being. It was tired, too tired to stay so alert so long. It could observe without actively watching, monitor its inhabitants without seeing them. As long as there were no disturbances, it barely needed to muster the energy to stay awake more than a few hours a day. The city drifted hazy before retreating back into the only sort of sleep it could manage. There was no telling how much time passed from one phase to the next. Time mattered little to beings of that nature. There wasn’t much that mattered to Gotham, in fact, save that circumstances remain steady and it be fed from time to time. More often recently.

Being awake was hungry work.


End file.
